Many sportsmen who participate in hunting and/or target shooting using a shotgun undertake to reload fired shotgun shells on a routine basis. A principal reason for this activity is that hand reloaded shells are much less expensive than new shells. In addition, in some instances, it is believed that a more precise and individually adjusted load may be obtained to especially suit a given user. Still further, there is a feeling among some sportsmen that the craftsman-like reloading of used shotgun shells is an accomplishment in itself.
In order to facilitate shotgun shell hand reloading, a number of reloaders for semi-automating the process are commercially available. Typically, these reloaders have a rotatable turntable structure which permits indexing of shotgun shells from station-to-station with a separate reloading operation being performed at each station. These operations include depriming, repriming, powder charging, wad column charging, shot charging and crimping. In many of the commercially available units, these operations are performed by actuating a lever to simultaneously perform reloading operations on an array of shells at different stations and at different stages of reloading.
While the best of the commercially available shotgun shell reloaders are convenient and reliable, there are two problems associated with their use which persist. A single station is employed, in many examples of the available reloaders, for both introducing spent shells (vertically upstanding, primer end down) and removing completed shells. (The shells are constrained against removal at all other stations in order that the shell position at each station is accurately defined to permit carrying out the several reloading steps.) The disadvantage of this arrangement is that a completed shell must be manually removed at the entrance/exit station before a spent shell is manually inserted at the same station. This necessity to manually handle the completed shells individually, as well known to those skilled in the art, is a distinct deterrent to the efficiency with which the reloading process is carried out.
Second, it is necessary to emplace a new primer, either from a dispenser or manually, in a receptacle intermediate the entrance/exit station and a second station at which the repriming operation is performed. As the shell carrier is indexed, the new primer is carried to the first station ahead of the shell, and the primer is supposed to then fall, under the influence of gravity, into an axial aperture in a spring pad to await the repriming operation. Again, as those skilled in the art will appreciate, the new primers do not always drop into the spring pad aperture in the correct position for the subsequent repriming operation, the force of gravity being insufficient to secure infallible operation of this intermediate step.
The present invention is directed to definitively solving both these problems.